How practice can damage your English
If you ask "How can I learn to speak English better?", many people will tell you "Practice, practice, practice". "Speak and write in English whenever you can" — they will say. All English classes are full of activities which involve speaking and writing. You produce sentences when you do an exercise in your textbook, when your teacher makes you speak in class, or when you have to write a composition. All these activities are supposed to help you with your English.
We agree that practice can be very useful. It's even necessary to learn English well. So what's the problem? The problem is that for many learners, "speaking" or "writing" means "making a lot of mistakes". Some people make a mistake in every sentence!
If you don't make many mistakes, then you can speak or write in English and it can only help. But if you do, then every time you write or speak, you reinforce your mistakes. As you write or speak, you repeat your mistakes constantly and your incorrect habits become stronger.
Imagine this situation: You are writing an e-mail message in English. Your English is not perfect and you want to write the message quickly. You write (incorrectly): I want speak English.
When you write a sentence, you also read it. So the incorrect sentence goes into your head. The next time you write a message, you will be more likely to write I want finish or I want be happy. Why? Because I want speak English is fresh in your head — you've just used it! And when you write I want a few more times, you get a "bad habit".
Reinforced mistakes become your way of writing in English. So the more you write, the worse your English becomes. Some learners' bad habits are so strong that no amount of correction seems to help.
Wait a minute—doesn't practice make perfect?
You have to realize that speaking or writing does not improve your grammar or your vocabulary. It's really very simple. Can you learn a new word from yourself? If you don't know how to say "Good bye" in English, can you invent it by yourself? No, you can't. You can only learn it by reading or listening to English.
If you make mistakes in your English sentences, that means you don't know how to say things in English. You need to learn how to say them. You won't learn that by speaking or writing. You must read and listen to correct English sentences. There is no way around that. You can speak and write later — when you can already build correct English sentences and want to improve your fluency.
What about “learning from mistakes”?
The only way you can learn something while speaking or writing in English is when somebody corrects your mistakes. If you say an incorrect sentence, and if your teacher points out the mistake and tells you the proper way to express your meaning, then your knowledge of English increases.
You may therefore think that speaking with mistakes is not so bad because it is a chance to fix your errors and learn something new. Unfortunately, this method of learning requires a competent person who will correct your mistakes.
English teachers:
The first problem is that your English teacher is usually available only for a few hours a week. During those few hours, he/she can correct a limited number of sentences — probably less than 100. But if you are serious about making progress in English, you will need to get knowledge much faster than that. So it is obvious that your learning process cannot be based on speaking in the classroom. (There are intensive, long-term courses which give better results, but they are expensive and impractical for people who have to work or go to school.)
The second problem is that teachers will not correct all your mistakes. They do not notice everything, and they do not have the time to correct every error. In addition, many teachers (especially non-native speakers) are simply incompetent. Sometimes they will even criticize correct sentences or suggest bad alternatives.
Native speakers (not teachers): This category includes your American friends, Australian penpals, native speakers on Internet forums, or just regular people around you, if you are in an English-speaking country. In general, native speakers will not correct your mistakes! As long as they can understand what you mean, they will completely ignore all your mistakes in grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. For example, the message below is perfectly understandable and could easily pass uncorrected:
I am want make question for knowing how to able speak English proper way. I need of a internet learn book for American word of slang. I will thank your help for life.
Why is that?
First, many native speakers consider it impolite to point out the mistakes of people who speak English as a foreign language. Telling someone that they made a mistake creates an awkward social situation, and most natives will avoid that.
Second, people are lazy. Correcting mistakes and suggesting alternatives is hard work, especially if a learner makes a lot of mistakes. It's much easier to ignore them and keep the conversation going. Sometimes native speakers will correct you if you ask them nicely (e.g. on the Antimoon Forum), but that is an exception, not the rule.
"Learning from your mistakes" sounds good, but it is not easy, because making mistakes is not enough — you still need someone to give you feedback. And it is difficult to find a competent person to help you. Besides, even if you had a teacher available for 24 hours a day, speaking with mistakes might not be very effective, since every error you make (corrected or not) teaches you bad English.
Solution: Stop making mistakes!
We have said that when you practice, you reinforce your mistakes, and that you cannot rely on feedback from other people. We have also said that you need practice to learn English.
There is a simple solution to this paradox: Never make mistakes! Before you conclude that we have completely lost it, please read what one of us (Michal Ryszard Wojcik) has written about his experiences:
It is close to the truth that I have never written an incorrect English sentence.
I knew many grammatical structures and I used only those that I knew. My sentences were similar to sentences which I knew to be correct. I followed good examples, so all my sentences were good.
In the beginning, I could write only very simple sentences, but all the simple sentences were correct. Then as I advanced, I added more and more complicated structures, and again all my sentences were correct.
Because of this approach, I was never reinforcing bad habits. I never had any bad habits! From the beginning, I copied only correct sentences. With every sentence that I wrote, I reinforced my good habits.
You can speak and write with almost no mistakes, too.
FAQ
“But if I'm afraid to make a mistake, I will never open my mouth!”
First, try to be more careful by using the rules of error-free speaking. If you still make a lot of mistakes (= more than 1 mistake every 3 sentences), or if you find that the rules are killing your motivation, you probably shouldn't open your mouth just now. Instead, try to get more input by reading and listening in English.
The sooner you realize you cannot "speak your way" to good English, the sooner you will make some real progress.
“But you cannot learn anything without mistakes!”
Of course nobody is perfect and some mistakes will occur. But believe us — you can learn English with almost no mistakes. How? You can fill your brain with correct sentences and imitate them. You can simply follow good examples.
If you write or say sentences that are similar to correct English sentences (from a book, a dictionary, or heard from a native speaker), then it is very hard to make a mistake!
People sometimes say that the process of learning a language has to involve many mistakes, because they think learning a language is like learning to swim, drive a car, or run a business. But it is very different because imitating correct sentences is easy if you have them in your head (much easier than imitating swimming strokes). The only hard-to-imitate element in languages is pronunciation. (A more detailed analysis can be found in this article.)
“Can I ever make a mistake on purpose?”
Yes. Sometimes you can say or write something which you think is wrong. You can do it if you want to learn how to say something in English. For example, if you are talking to a native speaker, you can do this:
1. Say "I'm not sure how to say this in English, but ..." and then say your sentence (which is probably wrong).
2. The other person can tell you how to say it in English correctly.
3. Learn the correct way to say the sentence.
Notice that this technique is only safe if:
. you are sure that the other person will correct you if you make a mistake
. you use it only occasionally
Mistakes and pronunciation
We've explained how speaking and writing with mistakes can damage your grammar and vocabulary. But the same can happen to your pronunciation.
Suppose you are talking to someone in English. You don't know how to pronounce a word, so you say it in your own way. Then, you become used to this incorrect pronunciation. You pronounce the word incorrectly again and again. You've gotten yourself a bad pronunciation habit.
In our opinion, pronunciation should be the first thing that you learn about English. If you do anything else, it will usually involve speaking. (Notice that even if you're reading a book, you're often pronouncing the sentences aloud or in your head.) That means you will be speaking with bad pronunciation and you will be teaching yourself bad habits.
So if you really want to avoid mistakes, you must study English pronunciation before you do anything else, and especially before you start speaking. When you first open your mouth, you should know how to pronounce everything (more or less) that you are saying.
Unlike learning grammar or vocabulary, the process of learning English pronunciation involves many mistakes. Your brain and your muscles must get used to new sounds. This requires practice and usually involves many errors. But it is best to take care of pronunciation first, before you develop any serious bad habits.
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